If you like Photography or graphic editing and use a Mac computer (like me) you may have heard of Apple’s program called Aperture. This program is based on iPhoto that is included on all newer Apple computers. My husband and I both enjoy photography and have been exploring more into the post production editing of the photos we take. This led us to try out Aperture.

Aperture is a nice program and highly revered in the photography world. It makes editing easy and is especially helpful if you enjoy editing RAW photo formats. The photo editing options are endless and too many for me to get into. Taking a simple self photo with my photo booth on my iMac I played around with some of the presets and got a feel for how this would work for amateur person jumping in. Having used Photoshop and Pixelmator the Aperture layout is very different, as well as the workflow. You shouldn’t let this detour you though, it is very easy to navigate. I did have some confusion on how to actually save a project once I was done with my edits, I did manage to discover the export feature which is not very straight forward. I have to say that I find this a great tool for photo editing and does a lot, but I would not say it is a standalone program. I think you’d still want another heftier program like Photoshop to really polish your work.

My husband and I both discovered one major flaw, freezing. We’ve been testing this software on 21.5″ iMac computers that are pretty new (new in Feb 2010). We found that Aperture will spontaneously freeze during a workflow and require a system reboot to allow the computer to work again. I’m a huge Mac fan and have NEVER had any issues with freezing, even when running Parallels and dual operating systems with a gazillion programs. This is my third Mac computer and I can attest to the reliability of the system. So these sudden freezes in Aperture are highly frustrating. We’d expect this from a Microsoft product, not an Apple product. Tsk tsk. A quick search on Google confirms that this is not a issue that only we are having.

So overall, this program has the potential for greatness, but falls short on reliability. We’ll try it again once Apple takes care of the stability issues. Want to try it out for yourself? Check out the 30 day trial at Apple.

Don’t want to take my word for it? Check out this PCWorld review that addresses the Aperture freezing issues.

I am officially back from vacation and spending this lovely Monday catching up on all my work. Ever feel like you need a vacation from your vacation? Fortunately when we arrived home we found that the weather in Minnesota was far nicer than that in Nevada, go figure. Yes, we were there for the SNOW IN LAS VEGAS!

My husband and I spent the week in Las Vegas, neither of us had been there before. Wowee, there is a lot to see! If you like to sight see its a great place to visit. We both loved the visual aspects of Vegas, the lights, the architecture, just everything. My husband has just picked up photography and was constantly stopping for pictures and learning how to use his Cannon SLR. I, on the other hand, stick to my point and shoot camera which I find does amazingly well for such a tiny camera. Aren’t those umbrellas neat?

We did find it funny how work and simply life follow us on vacation though. When taking pictures I was constantly looking at composition and layout in the way I would for web or graphic designing. When going back over our pictures you can tell which one of us (between my husband and I) had studied more in terms of layout. His excuse? “Oh honey, you can crop that for me”. Haha. I can tell you that on more than one occasion my husband stopped and said “Kristine, why are you taking a picture of THAT?” Can you tell by the look on his face in the above picture? That has got to be one of my favorites.

I love to grab images that I see around me to stick away for future inspiration. I find myself commenting on colors or the pattern or simply the layout of things around me. When you work in design its easy to fall into a pattern of doing the same stuff over and over, therefor I make a effort to watch for new things around me in my every day life. I think this is important for creative woman and is true for a lot of my clients. When was the last time you noticed a billboard’s unique use of color or how the reflection of a fountain dances on the water. I dare you to find one new thing that is inspiring to you the next time you are out running errands, or something that just looks neat. You just might be surprised at what you find!

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